Milan, away with palm trees in Piazza del Duomo: they will be replaced with alpine plants

Urban furniture is important, and if it is harmoniously linked to the context making it distinctive it becomes an iconic element of it along with theenvironment. However, the palms and banana trees put in Milan’s Piazza Duomo have not had much luck since seven years after they were planted, and the related controversy over an exotic plant put in the Lombard capital’s main square, they have all been removed: the banana trees and two palms were cut down as they were prey to pests that prevented their recovery. The surviving palms, however, were lifted out of the ground and will be placed in prophylaxis in green areas of the municipality pending re-planting in November in other areas.

The planting of the exotic plants in 2017 was sponsored by Starbucks, the American breakfast chain, while now the green regeneration of the flower beds in front of the Madonnina will be by Ermenegildo Zegna, the fashion brand, from whose offices they assure that the new flowerbeds will be ready for the Salone del Mobile with plants and shrubs from the Biella Alps, which are more akin to the climate (although the palms were not from Africa but were a particular species from China, resistant even to subzero temperatures): four evergreen, leafy groves of bushy camphor trees of different ages where rhododendrons will be grown in rotation from autumn to late spring, followed by philadelphus plants. These are plants chosen for their ability to create a favorable habitat for butterflies and pollinating insects. The new layout of the new Zegna-branded flowerbed was inspired by a painting by Dino Buzzati(Piazza del Duomo in Milan, a 1950s canvas) that depicts the Duomo as a mountain in the Dolomites.

Everything that happens in Milan’s most important square is an element of debate and controversy, any change to the square has to go through the superintendence, and the green area is an integral part of this context of Milanese identity. So impossible not to consider it a casual ornament but rather increasingly it has been ground on which to play tree solutions as if they were the installation of a work of art. And like a work of art that sends messages certainly the palms and banana trees in the square in Milan were sending a message about climate change and global warming, and now, at a time when Milan is being pointed at as one of the most polluted cities in Italy, the mountain corner can call out the need for clean, fresh air as in the mountains. Native plants, from alpine and subalpine areas and a great biodiversity, the Zegna Group worked with a group of botanical and landscape experts to bring to Milan in respect of biodiversity some of the characteristic elements of the vegetation of “Oasi Zegna” , in Bielmonte, in the province of Biella, a model of social and environmental awareness created since the late 1920s.

Milan, away with palm trees in Piazza del Duomo: they will be replaced with alpine plants

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